


pulse.txt

by Halberdier



Category: Persona 2, Persona 2 Eternal Punishment, Persona Series
Genre: Alcohol, Biting, Competitive sex, Dysfunctional Relationship, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Light Bondage, Oral Sex, frienemies with benefits, hate sex?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-11
Updated: 2018-03-24
Packaged: 2018-10-17 17:33:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10598817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Halberdier/pseuds/Halberdier
Summary: A city is a living thing, and like all living things, it has its own rhythm. A rhythm doesn't exist unless it is heard or felt. It's heard by a bartender who can't contain her curiosity. It's felt by two people who can't decide if they hate each other or not. Like the beat of a heart. Or the blows of a boxer. You get the picture. So even on the days off, two souls that pulse in tandem can't help but beat together, whether they like it or not.





	1. Chapter 1

A city has a pulse. Like the rhythm of a heart that has seen too much love. Like the beat of a boombox on a delinquent's shoulder. Like the alternating current that surges back and forth above and below the streets. A pulse. An energy that ebbs and flows. From person to person. From sidewalk to sidestreet. To and fro, pulsing, pounding, constantly consistent and constantly changing.

This pulse exists in every city, in every ward, from the oldest edges like the mountains in Rengedai, to the failing centers like the alleys in Hirasaka, to the vibing, thrumming hotspots that pull the kids these days to Yumezaki. Even here, in Narumi, the new, the powerful, a brand new playground for the rich and fabulous, built out of nothing like Port Island in Iwatodai and grown artificially with cold glassy concrete and steel rather than feudal forest trimmings and prayers. Even here, in Narumi, where the wealthy can pay hundreds of thousands to have their newest fantasies come true. Even here, in Narumi, that pulse finds a way to flow. And flow it does.

It is a power, and like any other it only exists in the transfer. In the phone call of an old friend blowing into town, and couldn't you find some time to see them. In the news that you haven't heard yet, but are about to find out. In the surreptitious glance that meets over the shoulders of the real dates you came in with. In the keystroke on a message board. In the whispered words between parents, can't we make sure that our child doesn't find out. In the chatter that rises only barely above the sound of the glass clinking on the bar, and shouldn't we keep it down, but we don't because the only person that can hear is the bartender, and what the bartender hears is confidential, isn't it.

"And as if on cue," she says, the flavor of gossip in her shaker, pouring into a glass rimmed with rumor, "in walks my favorite customer."

"Everyone's your favorite customer, doll," says the man in the mustard-colored suit. His long black hair falls over his shoulders and his round lenses are opaque with the glint of the atmospheric dimness that illuminates Ebony, the most intriguing bar in the ward. Narumi, the most intriguing ward in the city. Sumaru, the most intriguing city in Japan.

"Well of course they are," the bartender replies, after handing the martini to a man in the corner of the room, who silently thanks her with a wink from under his keffiyeh. "Everyone is so deeply, endlessly fascinating in their own way. It's why I do this. There's nothing I love more than people."

"There's nothing you love more than rumors," he corrects her, the corner of his mouth curling up in an almost feline smirk. "Let's not get confused as to what you're really after."

"Rumors _are_ people, sweetheart," she returns as easily as she straightens her vest. "Rumors are what people believe, what they hear, what they know. Like Salam,” she says, nodding to the older gentleman drinking her martini. “What everyone knows about him is only what everyone says. He says so little on his own, how could you get to know him otherwise? Would you believe he is a millionaire who collects maps? I believe that I would. Rumors are what make people so interesting. It's how they relate. How they pass on their personhood. It's the pulse that keeps a city going."

"Yeah, well, a city like this, that sort of pulse can register on the Richter scale. It's dangerous."

"It's exciting," she lobs back with a smoky-yet-electric languor, "and you of all people know it. Or was I mistaken in thinking I had Mister Dark-Side-of-Sumaru-City sit down at my bar again?"

He laughs in a soft but sardonic baritone that seems to rise from the pit of his stomach. "Touché," he admitted. "But don't tell me that you read my message board, because I won't believe you."

"Not at all." She sets a glass of whiskey gently on a cocktail napkin in front of him. Any bartender worth her salt knows what the regulars want before they ask. She adjusts her bowtie with a gentle tug. "But word travels. And you know I know everyone that comes in here."

"Is that why I'm your favorite customer?"

"Everyone's my favorite customer, handsome," she purrs. "But I have a special love for those who share their rumors with me. That's twelve hundred for the drink, by the way."

"I thought the economy was stronger than that."

"It is, and this whiskey is stronger than the economy. I can leave it open, if you like."

"Please do." He hands her a matte black credit card. "And if you want to share rumors, you should join my message board."

"Open it is," she declares, sliding the card into a rack beneath the bar. "In the interest of honesty, I should let you know that I did look at your website once. Nothing but alien conspiracies and anarchists asking about what restaurants sell guns under the table."

"It's been that kind of month," he mutters into his whiskey.

"And I don't have a computer at home. I prefer to get my love straight from the source. Like you do."

He raises an eyebrow and grinned. "But those are the rumors that I keep to myself."

"You sure you aren't sharing any with that cute little reporter and her friend?"

The man sets his drink down, his smile fading. "The barkeep at Parabellum doesn't ask me these kind of questions."

"And he doesn't serve you this kind of whiskey."

"Point taken."

"Mostly," she goes on, "I ask because you've been coming here a lot lately with them. And that adorable cop. And didn't I see that fashion model and that rich boy here with you too?"

"Don't worry. I'm not babysitting tonight."

"Then you wouldn't be interested to know that the redhead just walked in."

He turns to look, his hair following him only part of the way. And then he turns back so fast that his hair keeps going after he has finished. It wouldn't take a bartender to tell he has a serious internal struggle between the forces of wanting to see and the forces of not wanting to be seen.

Unfortunately for him, both sides of the struggle are decimated by the might of being stood behind.

"Baofu,” she says.

“Ulala,” he says without turning around.

"Evening, gorgeous," the bartender purrs to Ulala. "How's my favorite customer tonight?"

"Everyone's your favorite customer, baby," the young lady says with a gentle shake of her red spiked hair and a gentle curve of her black outlined lips.

"How could they not be?" she returns. "What'll it be tonight? A lovelorn liquor swirl? A draught of silken bedsheets? I can mix anything to fit your mood."

"Actually," she says, lifting up the hem of her trenchcoat dress to sit down next to the man, "I'll have what he's having." Her sentence isn't even finished before her fingers are wrapped around Baofu’s whiskey glass. She takes a drink.

"The hell do you think you're doing?" Baofu chokes out, shocked and incensed.

"Having a drink," Ulala replies with dreamy cheer. "You sound like you need one too. Sweetie," she says, leaning in seductively to address the bartender, "Could you get us both another? He's buying."

"Like hell, Red."

"Oh!" She gasps. "Is that actually your credit card it's on?"

There was a pause.

"Yeah, okay, two more and let's keep it open."

"Wasn't planning on closing it until I close this whole place, gorgeous," she says, and she pours two more thick, stout glasses of thick, stout whiskey.

"You know us well," Ulala says with a wink.

"I know everything," the bartender replies with a grin.

"What I'd like to know," Baofu says, addressing his unsolicited drinking partner, "is what you're doing here alone."

"I'm single and men are trash," Ulala says. "I can't think of a solitary legitimate reason to try to get someone to come drinking with me when I do it so well by myself."

"But you're sitting with me."

"I didn't plan it. Of all the gin joints in all the world."

"You're the one who walked into mine. I live in this ward."

"You squat in this ward. You have a lair."

"You have a disaster zone."

"That's Ma-ya's fault. My half is nice and clean and tidy."

Baofu smirks and sips his drink with a loud slurp. “Maybe that’s because you’re never there.”

Ulala slams her drink down and stares stilettos into the side of the tapbuster’s own daggerlike nose. “Is that supposed to mean something?”

Baofu shakes his head with a smile and orders another, which is replaced with the same flourish and swiftness with which it is downed. “Only speculating on what it would take for a woman to throw herself at a scumbag like Makimura.”

Ulala shuts her mouth tight. She looks down, alcohol and anger fuming from the pit of her stomach. She says nothing. She waits. She pieces her upcoming statement together, shaky from the intoxication of fury.

The bartender comes over and sets two whiskeys in front of them. She looks Ulala up and down, her heart going out to her. She hadn't heard what Baofu had said, but she knows that look. She had seen it in a thousand dames before, having taken a few too many verbal punches from a fellow what practiced his hooks a bit too often. Unfairness she had seen before, and this was no shocker. Just an unwelcome surprise to see it here, between her favorite customers.

Ulala taps her foot, thinking. “Well,” she says slowly, softly, with a bit of a shake, “at least I know I had a heart once.” She picks up both drinks, throws them back one after the other, then spits them both all over Baofu’s face. “Sorry for the mess, babes,” she says to the bartender. “I’ll be upstairs,” she hisses at Baofu, “because apparently I’m never home.”

Baofu and the bartender speechlessly watch Ulala sweep out of the room. Baofu slowly pulls a handkerchief out of his breast pocket and unfolds it. “Huh,” He breathes, and he wipes his glasses clean. “Guess her drink’s on me.”

“It’s not my business, handsome,” the bartender says, cleaning up the crossfire from the bar, “but you should probably follow her.”

“What do you care?” he humphs, keeping his glasses off and rubbing his face with his sleeve.

“I don't like when my favorite customers fight,” she sighs. “I’ve got a soft spot for you both. And I know you know better than to leave it like that.”

“Leave it like what?” he mumbles.

“Don’t play dumb with me, smart guy. She’s probably headed up to where your crew used to hang out. You know. That room those rich kids rented before it got sacked.”

“Shit.” Baofu stands up and starts for the exit. “It's still not safe up there.”

“Sweetie,” she calls after him, “your tab.”

“Close it and keep the card,” he says, stumbling out the door. “Get yourself something nice.”

Godspeed, the bartender wishes him silently. But as she cleans up, she lets it pass from her mind. The pulse will beat on, and she will be there to ride it and fuel it. Should the city float away or her hotel fall into the sea, she will be there to keep the pulse pounding.

Baofu feels his own pulse in his heart, his lungs, his ears and his temples. Anger. Panic. Alcohol. Fear. That idiot. What is she thinking? She knows better. But where else could she have meant? No, the rumor-loving bartender is right, Baofu tells himself, as he bangs his fist on the elevator walls. She’s gone upstairs. She’s gone to Nanjo’s old suite, the one that the New World Order trashed and thrashed and probably still watches. Does she want to die? Possibly. Who knows.

The elevator finally dings open what feels like thirty years later and he and his head pound down the hall. There, at the end, the door is taped shut with yellow but wedged open with determination. He hears crashing and fears the worst. He throws his whole weight against it -- a disastrous choice, as it was, technically, already open. He tumbles into the room and tries to pick himself up.

When he swings his head around, there, frozen, crouched next to a counter with a bottle in her hand, is Ulala Serizawa, the red spikes of her hair trembling with the rest of her. “What the hell do you _want_?” she hisses.

“What the hell do _you_ want?” he hisses back. “It’s not safe up here. Or did you forget that this was a crime scene?”

She shoots an irritated look around the room of broken glass and scattered evidence markers, and then fires that same look right at Baofu. “That is exactly why I’m here,” she says, and she crouches down next to the counter again, shoving things aside behind it. “Crime scene. Undisturbed evidence. Room still’s gonna have its whole minibar.” Clank. Crash. “Or what’s left of it. And no one can stop me.”

Baofu strides over, crouches next to her and grabs her wrist. “We need to get out of here.”

She twists her arm around to grab his wrist instead, then pulls him down to meet her fist. He falls, clutches his face, and moans in an undignified fashion. “Listen,” she growls at him. “We don’t need to do anything. We are not a we, if you want to imply in front of other people or in front of me that I am just some slut who crawls into anyone’s bed at a whim. You don’t know,” she continues, her growl turning tremulous. “He made me feel loved. He made me feel special. He was everything any girl could have ever wanted, and I, an _idiot_ , believed every single moment of it.”

She drops backwards onto her bottom and leans against a wall. She opens a bottle of cognac with her teeth and takes a swig. “I didn’t throw myself at him. He found out everything I craved in another person, and he made damn sure I fell for thinking he was all of it.” She takes another swig, and gently nudges Baofu’s head with the bottle. “But you wouldn’t know anything about that because you’ve never loved anyone in your entire life.”

Baofu groans as he sits up, securing his back against the counter, his feet pressed against the wall on which she leaned, and he reaches for the bottle. “You don’t know either,” he says, and he snatches the bottle out of her hands and sucks some of it down. “Even the good stuff doesn’t taste like anything anymore,” he says, reading the label, and he hands it back to Ulala. “Love is useless. It doesn’t save anyone. It doesn’t stop a bullet. It doesn’t end anyone’s suffering. Love is a lie made up to sell strawberry cakes and life insurance. What else is in there?”

She nudges the minibar door open with the toe of her boot and nudges something out with her foot. “That,” she says.

He picks it up and drinks it. “I couldn’t tell you what I just drank.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Honest. Can’t read the label.”

“No, asshole, not the booze,” she sighs, with a toss of her hair and a toss of the cognac. “Love. It’s real. It’s got to be. It’s the only thing that matters.”

“Nothing matters.”

“Nobody actually thinks nothing matters or they wouldn’t care enough to say it,” she says.

Baofu takes off his glove and cleans under a fingernail with his teeth. “What does it matter if it matters? It won’t raise the dead. It won’t show the truth. All it does is lead innocent people to make mistakes and ruin their lives and everyone else’s.”

Ulala stares at him with unfocused eyes. “So you’ve been hurt.”

Baofu swings his face to lock eyes with her. A difficult task on its own due to inebriation, made all the more difficult when wearing sunglasses in a room whose only light comes from the cityscape and the moon outside the windows. “Everyone’s been hurt. That’s why it’s bullshit.”

“So what?” she asks. “You just don’t love?”

“I’d say I try not to,” he replies, “but it hasn’t been difficult in a long time.”

She nudges him with her boot. “So you don’t fuck.”

He scoffs. “I never said that.”

“But you don’t,” she says, curling her legs back and sitting on her ankles. “You live in a dark basement and you watch the city council and the Tien Tao Lien and your website of shut-in syndromes and probably choke your cock to the sounds of someone else’s phone sex.” She chugs down the rest of the bottle. “I bet if a woman grabbed you by the balls you wouldn’t even know how to cum.”

Baofu rises shakily to his knees, pissed as hell and pissed in general. “What the fuck are you even saying? Or do you think talking like a sloppy coed is going to get me to leave?”

UIala gets up on her own knees as well, kneeling and looking steadily at him, despite being otherwise very unsteady. “Or maybe you don’t like girls. Finally, how you look at Katsuya makes sense.”

Baofu glowers at her and prickles at that. “You don’t know what I want,” he says.

She closes the distance between them. “I bet I can guess,” she says, and then her tongue is in his mouth.

His slides against hers. It is rough and tastes like cigarettes and stale spirits, and when he realizes what is happening he takes it back and pushes her away.

“What the fuck are you doing?” he whispers, but then his hands clutch her lapels and her hands clutch his and they fall to the floor together, writhing awkwardly to move to an area with more space.

“I’m fixing it,” she says, and this time when she slips her tongue into his kiss, she slips her hand into his pants, gropes around until she finds his balls, and squeezes without mercy.

He yelps, but not for long, and he sinks his teeth into her neck. She calls out a half-formed name, and together they fight against time and intemperance to get out of their clothes.

His pants are the first to slip free from his waist in time, and she wastes no time digging him free from his shorts and locking her lips around him. The frustrating softness of inebriation surges solid in response to her sucking, and she wiggles her tongue against the rim of his head.

She pulls off with a pop and a grin. “Why are you circumcised?”

“Why are you talking?” And he grabs her hair and shoves her back down onto his dick, which meets no resistance from a throat whose specialty was honed with hours of private practice. “Fuck,” he groans, his pelvis shaking from her insistent suction. “You’re good at this.”

She grabs his sack again, pulling it down, and he lets go of her in surprise at the pain. She swiftly ascends his body and kisses him, rubbing his precum between their tongues so he knows what she did to him. She draws her knees up and sits, grinding the fabric of her dress against his wanting dick with her ass. “Better than you so far,” she says, and she reaches down to pull off his choker. “You need bruises under this,” she says, and she swiftly clamps her teeth down.

Baofu tries not to make a sound. It hurts. And not in a sensual way. He’s no stranger to playing rough, but this… Ulala crunches into his flesh and sucks like a vampire.

It’s too much. He grips her chest and shoves her off. He gets to his feet, half shimmying, half staggering. “What the fuck was that?” he growls between catching breaths.

She kneels and looks up at him, half lustily, half lividly. “What the fuck was what?” she shoots back between drunken burps.

“Are you trying to physically eat me?”

“Not anymore,” she grumbles with a combination of disappointment and righteous anger. She gets back to her feet. “So you can put that thing away.”

Baofu looks down - his composure wrecked by fluster, confusion, and cognac - and hastily shoves himself back into his shorts.

“What?” she asks, clumsily straightening her clothes. “Never had a hickey before?”

“A hickey, yeah,” he coughs. “But that wasn't a hickey.” He tries unsuccessfully to buckle his belt with any kind of dexterity. “Unless the real reason that con artist left you was you tried to rip out his jugular with your--”

His sentence ends with an abrupt lack of breath. He buckles over, gasping.

“Did you,” he croaks, tugging at his shirt collar.

“just punch,” he continues, clawing at the ground for support.

“me,” he manages, switching hands between the floor and his torso.

“Right in the solar plexus,” Ulala finishes. She steps forward and places a foot menacingly onto the hand that clutches the rug.

His lungs refill. “Why the hell--”

“Shut the fuck up,” she spits.

Baofu looks up, utterly bewildered.

“You need,” she says, selecting her words like a headline editor, “to stop.”

“I what?” he wheezes.

“Need,” she says.

“To,” she says.

“Stop,” she says.

The toe of her shoe begins to dig into his fingers.

“Get off of my hand,” he mutters through clenched teeth.

“Get off of my ass,” she replies, not moving.

“I’m not on your--”

“Quit trying to be cute, you piece of shit,” she barks, and she presses all of her weight down.

“Fuck!”

“All you have ever done,” she tells him, her anger vibrating almost visibly throughout the whole room, “is be hostile, angry, and a complete dick. I try to reach out. I try to get through. I try to work with you so we can figure out what the hell is going on, and yet all you do is tell us all that we’re idiots. Especially me.”

She finally lets up and crosses the room to the previously plundered minibar.

“Me,” she continues, digging for more booze. “I just want a friend. Or at least an ally. But you find out just one thing about my past and you don’t let it go.”

Baofu massages his hand while bottles clink and glass shatters and Ulala keeps going from behind the counter.

“You sit there in your fucking dusty cave of brooding in your fucking office chair of superiority and you call yourself ‘Revenge’ and you think, somehow, that no one can ever compare to how much you’ve been hurt. Oh yeah,” she says, standing up too fast and nearly twisting her ankle, “I know you’ve been hurt. It takes one pathetic fucking drunk to know another, and nobody gets to be such pathetic fucking drunk as you and me if they weren’t fucking burned. So what? So fucking what? I gave my heart and my money to a guy who lied and used me. I was conned. Makimura conned me. Are you happy? Are you better than me because I was fooled?”

She chucks a broken bottle of riesling across the room and misses Baofu by at least five feet.

“Well you aren’t fooling anyone. You aren’t some soulless outlaw above such puny concerns like emotion. You aren’t some teenage boy’s comic book anti-hero with nothing to lose. And you sure as hell aren’t Taiwanese, you perfectly-accented law scholar with a samurai-shaped Persona. You’re just scared that anyone will ever figure out who you are, and when they do, there won’t be a single thing you can do to impress them.”

She takes a pint glass from a cabinet and slams it against the tile floor. The rage in her heart thrums palpably, and Baofu’s pulse pounds as his Persona resonates with hers. In this moment he feels everything she does like little league team’s worth of baseball bats to the gut. It’s too much. He can’t move. He can’t speak. But she doesn’t stop.

“Well you haven’t impressed me. Not even once. But I wanted you to. But you didn’t. So if you ever want my tongue to gently caress your shrivelly unwashed balls again, and I know you do, and I know you always have, you tool, because we have literal magic powers that literally makes our souls buzz with recognition, then you can kiss my ass and beg me to reconsider and maybe, if you’re really lucky and you actually open up for once, you can finally see a grown woman naked in person.”

She takes a bottle of moscato and tries in vain to uncork it. Instead, she breaks the neck off with her bare hands and pours it into her mouth, spilling plenty onto her face and neck and dress. She tosses the half-empty bottle aside and doubles over, coughing and almost sobbing with seething anger. She rights herself and straightens her clothes. 

“Nothing to say?” she asks breathlessly.

“What do you want me to say?” Baofu asks back, finally getting to his feet.

“Honestly?” She laughs softly and sighs. She rubs her left shoulder with her right hand and stretches. “Right now?” She wipes her face with her sleeves and clears her throat. “I want you to go the fuck to sleep.”

She raises her arm. “Ciao,” she says, and the red glare of Callisto rises behind her.

A moment later, the morning sun stabs dream needles into his retinas. He fumbles for his sunglasses and finds them next to his body, on the floor of the trashed hotel room. Right where he left them both. Along with his choker, his jacket, his sexual frustration, his pulsing headache, and his intense confusion. The only thing that was missing was his dignity.


	2. Chapter 2

Funny thing about pulses: they can change.

Sure, everyone knows that, you'd say. The man you love shows his true colors, it gets faster. Get in a fist fight with a machine gun, it gets faster. Wake up with a hangover, it gets slower. Bleeding out on the floor of an abandoned factory, it gets slower.

Of course it does. But it's not just like that. After all, it always evens out in the end. A pulse keeps equilibrium. We're talking actual, tangible, nontemporary change. And there, that's where it is. That can change. Not just the tempo, but the strength. Even the pattern. It can become a new normal. And everyone can feel it when it happens, even if they don't know on the surface.

And, just like a person's pulse, a city's pulse can change all the same. You might not notice. You probably weren't paying attention. But a bartender. A bartender would notice. After all, nobody has her finger on the artery of the city like a bartender.

So when her favorite customer walks on in after a long time away, she knows. Even without a word. Bartender's seen her countless times before. Countless states. Makeup and red hair anywhere from perfect to dissolving. But when the pulse changes, she knows. And she is right there with the perfect medicine.

“Is this a Nighty Night?” Ulala asks, dazed and boggling vacantly at the sudden glass in her hand. “I haven't ordered yet.”

“No,” the bartender says, and she takes a hesitant sip.

“Fuck,” she breathes, letting out what feels like a thousand-year old sigh waiting for the perfect moment to make a break. “I didn't know how much I had forgotten. That's still perfect. That's seven, right?”

“Not for you, Red. This one's on me.”

“You can't just give me free drinks. You'll get in trouble.”

“Three things wrong with that, doll,” the bartender says with an affectionate but unassuming touch on Ulala's arm. “One, I most certainly can. Just don't come to expect them. Two, I'm too good a bartender to get in trouble. Oh, one tick.”

She steps aside for a moment to retrieve and open a bottle of Belgian beer and bring it to Salam, who had just walked in to sit in his usual corner and think about his usual thoughts (which were maps). She comes back as quickly and professionally as she might wipe a spot off the counter. “And three,” she continues, “it's not free. I didn't say it was on the house. I said it was on me. My tab.”

“You have a tab?”

“Of course, baby. Can't sell the swill if you never toss the sauce.”

“But now I feel guilty.”

“You'll feel more guilty if you don't drink it. It's okay, gorgeous. It's a gift. Besides, I came into some money and nothing to do with it. Drink up. Next one's on you.”

“Damn, babe,” Ulala says between sips. “You're too good to me.”

“Seems to me, you need some extra goodness.”

“Is it that obvious?”

“Maybe not, but you know I would know anyway.”

“You hear things.”

“I know things. People tell me things, and I tell them things. You sell fashion, sweetie, you know people.”

“I sell underwear.”

“You sell fashionable underwear, Red. You can’t sell that if you don’t know how to keep your finger on the pulse.”

“The pulse?”

“Everybody’s got one, and I don’t mean in their arteries. It’s something more than that. And I know you have to know how to read it like I do. It’s how you sell your lingerie, it’s how the cute cop questions a suspect, it’s how your roommate writes her articles, and it’s how that tap buster runs his website.”

Ulala pulls a face and makes an extended unintelligible noise somewhere between general distaste and chronic emphysema. But in that noise, the bartender swears she hears the name Baofu.

“I had a feeling he was involved,” she says. “Take another sip, babes, you’ll feel better.”

“No I won’t,” Ulala says, “but it’s worth a try.” To her credit, the sip she takes is a long, lingering one that reminds her of being wrapped in starlight and subtle breezes, but it’s clear that the feeling wears off just a little bit too quickly. She puts her arms on the bar and her forehead on her arms and doesn’t say anything for a few moments.

“What’s wrong, baby?” the bartender asks, knowing instinctively when a _I don’t want to talk about it_ is really more of a _Please ask me about this, I am dying to talk about it but I don’t know how to start_. “What’s going on between you and Baofu?”

Ulala doesn’t look up from her arms. “Me and Baofu,” she says, with a deep sigh that fogs up the bar beneath her lips. “There is no me and Baofu. Hell, I’m not sure there’s even a Baofu.”

“Well, sweetie,” the bartender says gently, “I myself am decently positive there is a Baofu. If my eyes aren’t playing tricks on me, I believe one just walked in the door.”

Ulala moves her head up slowly and follows the bartender’s gaze to the door where, just walking in, is a long black mane atop a gold suit. He hasn’t yet looked toward the bar, but when he does, his eyes meet Ulala’s for a moment through his mirrored sunglasses, and the two of them freeze.

In this moment, the air itself becomes as thick and glassy as a Harlem Nocturne, and the pulse, perhaps, that normally beat within the room soft and slow stops for a beat before resonating like a concussion. An absolutely palpable energy passes between them, holds them in place, locking them both where they sit and stand respectively, until finally, the newcomer finds the strength to slowly turn on his heel and walk out.

“ _Stop right there, asshole_ ,” Ulala bellows, and Baofu involuntarily does as commanded.

She slowly rises from her perch and crosses the floor with strides that are confident, slow, aggressive, and nowhere close to as intoxicated as she would like. “You sorry excuse for a human being,” she says as she walks, punctuating her words to the rhythm of her hips. “You are a liar, a user, and a cheat.”

He holds in place, his own inner self thrumming with the menace that hers projects as she nears.

  
“And now look at you,” she says, drawing closer, and her voice drops to a much quieter volume as she squares up to him. “Last I saw you, you were a few bulletholes short of a full clip, trying to use us as bait. And now I know. Now I know everything.”

She pokes a finger in his chest and glares into where his eyes probably are under the sunglasses. “I know who you are.” Her voice rises. “I know where you’re from.” It rises again. “I know your real name.” And again. “And I know what you’ve done. And!” and at this point, she is practically shouting, and everybody in the bar who wasn’t already staring at them cannot help themselves from doing so anymore, “the very _least_ you could do!!”

He involuntarily gulps.

But her voice drops to a whisper. “Is let me buy you a drink.”

Not a single sound comes during the next dozen seconds or so.

“You,” Baofu says, then pauses to reconsider. “What?”

“Let me buy you a drink,” she mumbles again, breaking eye contact, “so we can set the record straight,” and she draws a very long breath, “and so I can apologize.”

More silence.

“You… want to apologize?”

She looks determinedly down at her boots. “You have been through some awful shit and the last few times we were in a bar I beat you up.” She bites her lip. “Or worse. And though you were a complete shithead and though you could have avoided so much by just being honest and trusting any other goddamn human for once in your life, I don’t think you deserved what I did. Especially… Especially last time.”

“Last time?”

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” she says, and she grabs his arm and drags him over to the bar. She’s always stronger than she looks, and she certainly doesn’t look like a damsel. “Drink first. Talk during. But more drinks first.”

She shoves him down onto a stool and shoves herself down on the one next to it. “Babydoll,” she says with a gesture to the bartender, “I will literally tell you what kind of underwear the mayor wears if you give us both another for free.”

The rumor-loving bartender laughs out loud in spite of her cool exterior, and the whole room returns to its easier, jazzier, classier feeling. “It looks like the guilt about the free drinks has gone away, hmm?” She grins at Ulala, who grins sheepishly right back, then gently nudges her nose with a knuckle. “I will absolutely buy you both a drink, if it means my favorite customers finally make nice. How about that?”

Baofu grunts, newly composed. “Well, we’ll see about that. I can pay for my own drink, you know.”

“You already are, handsome,” the bartender purrs, unstopping a decanter and setting out two short glasses. “I pay my tab using that card you left when you ran out after her, dripping with whiskey.”

Baofu scowls with the memory. “Don’t mention it.”

She slides the glasses forward and smiles sympathetically. “Did you want the card back?”

“Nah. If they haven’t missed it by now, they never will.”

The bartender moves on with a wink. The bar moves on with its night. The two drinkers, however, find it hard to move on with the conversation. The air is still stagnant between them, and the pulse, well… it tries. But them? They don’t try hard enough.

It’s a troublesome scene, to be sure. Whiskeys one and two apiece don’t have much effect. A martini and a half start to make a dent, but then, these are stubborn and experienced drinkers. And though Ulala had been determined to break through when Baofu walked in, neither she nor he seem to be much for words right now.

The bartender plays it cool the rest of the night. Gives them space when they need it. Gives them drinks when they want it. Gives them a quiet night and a thorough menu to work through their issues. As closing time rolls around, the two of them only look like they have something they want to say. But whatever it is, they sure as hell haven’t said it.

The customers have all but gone home. Salam has gone up to his room to dream his usual dreams about maps. The pianist has taken his music and walked andante out the door. It’s quarter to three. There’s no one in the place, except, of course, for the bartender, her two favorite customers, and the faintest hint of a pulse starting to form.

“I’m sorry, loves,” she says with a sad smile. “I’ve got to kick you out now.”

Ulala sways on her stool and opens her mouth wide. “Nooooooooo!” she wails softly. “We haven’t figured anything out!”

“Baby, I feel for you,” she says, “but rules are rules.”

Baofu is a little teetery himself, and he leans forward on his elbows and slurs just a bit. “That’s fine,” he says. “I should be getting home.”

“No!” Ulala pouts. “You aren’t going anywhere until I have said what I have to say!”

“Then say it.”

“I don’t have enough tiiiiiiiiiime.”

Baofu sighs. “Then we can continue this conversation at my place.”

“No good,” she says, shaking her head with her hands in the air. “I’m not going to have a heart to heart in Deep Thought’s smelly basement.”

“Your place?”

“Too far away. We’d never make it like this.” She turns back to the bartender. “Can’t we just stay here?”

The bartender laughs softly and gazes at Ulala with the kind of smile you reserve for a cat that is meowing at the food in your hand when you know you can’t give it up. “Sweetie, you know I’d do anything I could for you. But you also know that I absolutely cannot in a million years do that.”

“Why not?” Ulala asks, pouting with hurricane force.

But the bartender is no stranger to adorable pouts. “What a bizarre question, baby. You know why not.”

“No one will find out.”

“Sure they will.,” she says with a disbelieving tone. “There’s security cameras and everything.”

“Well hold on,” says Baofu, and the two turn to look at him. “Fixing that’s an easy trick. Did anything out of the ordinary go down here last night?”

The bartender is significantly less sure of herself now. She figured that Baofu, at least, would be a little more amenable to being told to leave. “No? I came in this afternoon and everything was exactly how I left it.”

Baofu smiles that catlike smirk of his again. “Then it’s not an issue. I can just run last night’s footage through the feed. Give me two minutes and an ethernet connection and I’ll have this completely taken care of.”

“Now hang on,” the bartender says, frowning for the first time all night. “I look the other way a lot, but I _know_ that’s illegal. I can’t be party to this.”

Baofu lowers his glasses for a moment and looks her in the eyes. “The city ward of Narumi, where we are sitting right now, is all a front for construction and excavation efforts by the New World Order, a secret organization led by Foreign Minister Tatsuzou Sudou that has control over the city’s government, police force, and mass media. As of now, it’s unclear exactly what their goal is, but it’s a good damn bet that when they find what they’re looking for, this whole ward is expendable. Hell, this hotel was likely financed by NWO money. If I were you, I’d get out of this place. Out of Narumi. Hell, out of Sumaru City if you’re lucky, but if not, I know my friend in Aoba ward could use a hand at his bar Parabellum.”

Silence.

The bartender chews on the inside of her cheek and glances around the room. “That’s, uh,” she says, and then pauses a little more to consider it. “I have to admit that I have never quite heard a rumor that thorough.”

Baofu looks at her with an expression that he hopes somehow communicates the fact that corporations and governments have only their own interests at heart and that nothing that a law-abiding citizen will ever do will ever truly matter.

She eventually pulls her eyes away from his. “There’s an ethernet port behind the piano.”

“Thanks doll,” he says, and he gets up to do whatever it is he plans to do.

“Yeah,” she says. “Don’t mention it.” She busies herself with closing the bar -- locking up the luxury liquors, wrapping up the rails. She doesn’t glance at Baofu, working wonders with the wires. She doesn’t make eye contact with Ulala either, and the silence between them is uncomfortable for the first time since Ulala discovered this place.

Baofu returns, his work completed. “All they’ll see when they look at the cameras is an empty bar,” he says, triumphantly returning to his stool.

The bartender breathes a short, quiet sigh. “Just don’t give them a reason to look, okay?” she says, uncharacteristic unease in her voice. “Don’t touch my alcohol, don’t take my money, and don’t break my bar. And I want you out of here by the time the front desk begins thinking about breakfast. _Entienden_?”

“I don’t really know what that means, but sure,” Baofu says.

“It means _understand_ ,” Ulala says, looking at the bartender with apologetic eyes. “I’ve been learning how to flamenco dance, so I’ve been picking up Spanish here and there too. Do you speak it a lot?”

“I have to leave now,” the bartender says. “Just… be safe. Don’t make me regret this. And make it worth it, okay? If I stop working here, I want to be the one to choose that.”

Baofu grins and puts his hand on his heart. “Don’t you worry.” He reaches in the breast pocket of his coat and pulls out a business card. “Favors for favors.”

“We’ll see,” she says, taking it, and walking toward the exit.

“We love you,” Ulala calls out, just before she leaves, and it gets her to turn around and stop.

“You’re my favorite customers,” she says, and then smiles, briefly, with authenticity.

And then she was out. And the two were alone.

“So who was Miki Asai?” Ulala says, breaking the silence with a ball peen hammer.

“You get straight to the point, don’t you?”

“Straight to the point would be, ‘Who was Kaworu Saga,’ but I figured I’d let you off easy without the philosophy.”

“That one’s easier,” Baofu says, and he lights up a cigarette. He offers her one as well, but she waves it away. “Kaworu Saga was a state prosecutor. He was secretly working on an investigation into the man who would later become the Foreign Minister of Japan and found the New World Order. Kaworu Saga had a lead, thanks to his assistant, that tied Sudou to the Tien Tao Lien, a crime family from Taiwan. Together, Saga and his assistant went to Taiwan on an undercover stakeout. This mission was unapproved and unsanctioned by the Japanese government, and Prosecutor Saga was so far out of his jurisdiction that if anything went down, the two of them would be completely alone. So they were. And it did. Violence broke out, and both Saga and his assistant got caught in the crossfire. As far as the Japanese government is concerned, both Kaworu Saga and his assistant died that night and never returned.”

Ulala looks at him for a bit, lips in a hard line as she considers what he said. Then she reaches up, plucks the cigarette from between his fingers and his lips, and begins smoking it. “There is so much bullshit there I don’t even know where to start.”

Baofu scoffs something unintelligible and reaches for his cigarette back, but Ulala’s hand dodges far more quickly than he can keep up. “I did offer you your own,” he says sulkily, before giving up and facing her with both the glare of his eyes and the glare of his glasses.

“It’s just so obviously practiced and transparent,” she says, staring at the ceiling and blowing smoke toward it. “There’s nothing in there that tells me anything about either who you are or who you used to be. It’s just how you supposedly died.” She takes another drag and blows it in his face. “So smooth and rapid fire too, like a voiceover in some American action film. Like you’ve been waiting for this moment to give this speech and rehearsed it over and over in your head. You probably glare at yourself in the mirror while you do it. Smirking. God.” She stubs out the cigarette, half smoked, into the crystal ashtray. “This is why I opened with asking about Miki. Who, by the way, you haven’t even mentioned.”

“She’s the assistant,” he says.

“Well, yeah,” she says, rolling her eyes almost like the wheels on a slot machine, “I figured that out. But who was she? Who was she to you? Who is she still to you?”

Baofu picks up the cigarette stub, lights it, and puffs on it so fast that, in less than a minute, it’s nothing but a filter with a pillar of ash. Looks Ulala in the eyes for a moment, then reaches into his coat for another cigarette.

Ulala touches his arm to stop him, then reaches into her purse and hands him a flask. “I’m sorry.”

He takes it and sucks down the entire thing. “So am I.” He hands it back to her.

She throws it behind her, jumps from her stool to straddle his lap, and kisses him hard.

He kisses her back, then pulls away. “What are you doing?”

“I owe you an apology,” she says, stroking his jawline with her fingernails. “I’m not very good at them.”

She kisses him again, and this time he kisses her back for a long time, his rough tongue rubbing against her softer, if sharper one, sharing the smoke and fumes and desire of everything between them. She kisses down his chin and throat, skipping over his choker, unbuttoning his jacket and shirt.

She stops kissing and unbuttoning halfway through and sinks down to the floor, sliding down his legs and trailing her hands down his thighs, then back up. “I feel like I should ask,” she says, looking up.

“I’ll be honest,” he says, “I really do not understand you.”

“You’ve been through a lot, and it’s made you a callous asshat. I’ve been through a lot and it’s made me into something I don’t want to be too. We’ve been specifically awful to each other, and I, for one, would like to be the bigger man and suck your cock.”

He stared down at her. “You want your tongue to gently caress my shrivelly unwashed balls again?”

She flushed and looked down. “I didn’t think you’d remember me saying that.”

“Word for word.”

She looks up at him, anger back in her eyes. “All right, fine, if you don’t want it--” but she is interrupted by his fist in her hair, shoving her face into his crotch. She feels him straining against his pants underneath her lips and nose, and she drags her tongue slowly all over the bulge. She laughs a deep, dark, throaty chuckle against him. “So that’s a yes?” she whispers with her lips brushing on the inside of his thigh.

“My balls are freshly washed,” he says, “and you owe them an apology.”

And together, in sync for once, they unbuckle his belt, unzip his trousers, shuffle them off just enough to free his cock, which she takes in hand, pulls up taut, and claims with her tongue in one uninterrupted stroke from taint to tip, then plunges the whole of it down her throat.

And like that, words don’t matter, she slides her mouth up and down his shaft in swift, fluid motions. His breath is heavy -- tense and shaking, the passion of the moment making him brace himself, lifting the bare parts of his body just over the seat -- but he doesn’t moan or grunt, his voice all used up from his most recent attempt at honesty. It feels so much more natural than it did last time, the anger and frenzy from god knows how long ago completely absent in this moment. The only sound in the room is the soft rasping of breath and the gentle wet splashing and slapping of the act. Her free hand yanks her skirt up from under her knees reaches in to add another wet sound of her own as she rubs herself.

He can’t help but appreciate this -- and why shouldn’t he? Here she is, sucking his dick, and the act of it turning her on so fiercely she can’t help but seek release -- and in his supreme and boundless confidence, he breaks the silence. “Oh you like this, huh?” he says, low, practiced, and predictable.

She doesn’t stop sucking, her stride doesn’t waver, but she does roll her eyes and then lock them with his. With a muffled snort and a swift, sudden motion she moves her hand from between her legs to between his, and her slicked-up middle finger plunges two and a half knuckles deep inside his hole.

His breath catches and he curses loudly, the sensation -- far better than he’d admit -- such a shock that he breaks concentration and cums far sooner than he intended. She clamps herself down on him, holding him in place, while his cock and balls pulse with thick, legato beats, shooting his stream again and again into her.

When it’s clear he has had enough, she pulls back, and rights herself on a barstool. Save for the mess on her hand and the smudges on her makeup, she betrays little evidence of the act. A sardonic grin spreads on her face, showing clean teeth.

“So it’s like that, huh?” she purrs.

Meanwhile, he’s still gripping the barstool with both hands, his bare ass a centimeter off the seat, his knees trembling just a bit as his cock slowly decides what to do with itself. He huffs ragged breaths. “You did that on purpose, you bitch,” he says.

“You ruined the moment,” she replies. “I do like how it gives new context to the way you bicker with the cop. I’ve seen the way you look at each other. Or does he already know?”

“Real cute. If you tell anyone,” he starts.

“I won’t tell anyone,” she says, “that you like it up your butt. On the condition,” she continues, “that you don’t tell a single person that I sucked you off. It will be just our little secret. Deal?” she asks, holding out the messy hand.

Baofu stares at it, then at her, and then laughs a deep, hearty, and bitter laugh. “You’re a psycho.”

“And you’re an emotionally constipated asshole.”

He spits in the palm of his hand and shakes hers.

“Yes we are. Deal.”

“Deal.”

“Come on, let’s clean this place up. We can't get our girl in trouble.”

"It's true. Save a job, save a life. Who knows how much we owe her."


End file.
